Author: Agent Hatake (agentANBUhatake)
Summary: Any mission that he was sent on could be his very last and that reality hadn't particularly fazed him before. It wasn't until his friends had pushed him into loves' gentle embrace that, that reality had started to hit home. KakashiKagome IY/Naruto Xover
Disclaimer: I'm still building my paralegal forces, so wait a while before I officially own both Rumiko Takahashi and Masashi Kishomoto's works. But until then, I don't own.
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Outlandish Cries: Chapter 1 Part 3 of 3.
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Kagome hummed happily as she entered the Hokage Tower for the third time that day. She smiled as she stepped into the Missions Room, and beamed at the exhausted Kurenai. A new person was working with Kurenai. He was darker skinned with hair tied up in a ponytail, wore the Konoha militia clothes, and had a scar that ran across the bridge of his nose.
"You seem overly happy. Something good happen?" Kurenai smiled from behind the desk as she collected yet another mission scroll from another ninja.
"Un. I got a job!" Kagome nearly did a jig right then and there. The first day and she got so lucky as to land a job.
"Wow, that was quick." Kagome helped Kurenai out of her chair and Kurenai set off to do more introductions.
"Kagome this is Umino Iruka. Iruka, this here is my cousin Higurashi Kagome!" She pulled their faces together side-by-side and they hit Iruka with a double smile.
"I can see the resemblance. It's a pleasure to meet you, Higurashi-san." He scratched the back of his head in a nervous gesture and extended his hand for her to shake.
"Likewise." She shook his hand, noting how it engulfed her own and how callous it was against hers: a man's hand. She smiled.
Kagome turned to Kurenai and quirked an eyebrow, "Shall we?"
"Oh, you don't know how glad I was to see your face."
"Bye Iruka-san." They chorused together and left the missions room.
"Kurenai! Higurashi-san! Over here, over here!" Ino waved towards them to join their table.
"For some reason, I had a hunch they'd be here." Kurenai whispered behind a hand.
Ino was all cheers, "Sit down, sit down! We'll order some more yakiniku."
Kagome settled in beside a pink haired girl, no older than 16 years of age and let Kurenai have the aisle seat. Kurenai sat down with a grateful sigh, glad to be off her feet
"Ah! Higurashi-san, this is my teammate Akimichi Chouji, and she's Haruno Sakura, a medic-nin. Everyone, this is Higurashi Kagome, Kurenai's cousin."
"A medic-nin? That must be exciting." Kagome mentioned.
"Sometimes. Other times it's a pain in the ass." Sakura commented with a scowl and a sigh.
Kagome giggled, "Troublesome patients?"
Sakura laughed, "Yeah, troublesome patients. I wish my day was over but after dinner I have to get back to work."
"Troublesome, eh. . .? Man, I wish Shikamaru and Asuma were here." Chouji said.
"Wait, wait." Kagome started, "I know who Asuma is but who's this Shikamaru?"
Ino blinked, "Oh! He's our third teammate." She pointed to Chouji and herself.
Kagome crinkled her nose, "Then how do these teams work? Don't you need a medic-nin on your team as well? I thought Haruno-san was on your team?"
"She's got a team of her own." Kurenai added, in between bites of yakiniku. "When academy students graduate they're called genin and assigned into groups of three with one jounin as their teacher."
"There are rankings of ninja?"
"It sounds like you don't know much of ninja." Chouji mentioned; his mouth watered as more beef came to their table.
"She grew up in a non-ninja village." Kurenai explained, "I'll be back, I need to get to the restroom." She shuffled out of her seat and walked away.
"At the bottom of the barrel, there are academy students. Once they graduate their called genin. When they take a test and pass it, they're called chunin. And then the highest level under the Hokage, the leader of our village, is the jounin."
"I see. Still, shouldn't there be a medic in each team?" Kagome questioned, brows furrowed in thought.
"There should," Sakura joined in, "but there's not a lot of resources and time to teach a bunch of people in the arts of healing. Our current Hokage is trying to change that." She said with pride.
Ino rolled her eyes and pointed with her thumb at Sakura, "She's the Hokage's apprentice. Our Hokage is known world wide for her mad healing skills."
"Wow, Haruno-san, you want to become the Hokage?" Kagome said in awe.
"Oh! No, no," Sakura waved her arms around, "that title is going to be going to someone else, my teammate Uzumaki Naruto." She smiled with warmth and then rolled her eyes, "That is, if he finally buckles down and starts getting knowledgeable in politics."
The others chuckled and laughed.
"Ahh, I'm back." Kurenai sighed.
"Are we done celebrating?" Kagome asked.
Kurenai snorted, "We barely got started. I'm eating for two here." She gestured toward her stomach and tucked in again.
"W-What are you celebrating, Kurenai-sensei?" A soft voice asked from behind.
"Hinata-chan!" Both Ino and Kurenai chimed. Kagome scooted closer to Sakura, as three more people joined in.
"Wait, wait!" Kagome laughed. Everyone got quiet. "Let me guess who is who. Obviously Hyuuga Hinata," She nodded her head toward the longhaired, shy girl. "And lets see, Aburame Shino," she pointed to the heavily cloaked boy, wearing the dark shades, "And Inuzuka Kiba." She gestured to the last with the red downward triangle tattoos on his cheeks and the feral grin.
"That easy, huh?" Kurenai laughed.
"Well, with how you described them in the letters I'd be surprised if I got it wrong."
"Higurashi Kagome." Team 8 said with a bow.
"That easy, huh?" Kagome shot back, with a giggle. Seats were grabbed and pulled closer to the table, but Sakura excused herself to head back to her shift. Hinata sat between her sensei and Kagome, Shino took the other seat beside Ino and Kiba pulled up a chair.
"Aww, how come they knew about Higurashi-san before us?" Ino whined.
"Well, believe it or not Ino, your team wasn't the first to suggest putting me on lockdown. I had to tell them about Kagome before they let the subject drop." Kurenai rolled her eyes with an impish smile. "And we're celebrating Kagome getting a job."
"Congratulations." "That was pretty quick."
"Thank you, thank you."
"But you haven't told me where you got it." Kurenai pointed out.
"A bookstore. The one in the east shopping district."
"You know," Ino began in a lilting tone, Chouji sat up in alarm, he knew what that tone meant. He was about to warn Kagome of impending doom but got elbowed on the side by his teammate. He sighed, there was no stopping her, and "we hardly know anything about you Higurashi-san."
The rest leaned in interested besides Kurenai; she was busy taking care of the meat.
Kagome bit into a slice of beef and shifted, "What do you want to know?"
"Well, for one, your family. How exactly are you related to Kurenai?"
"Hmm, in short my father was Kurenai's mother's brother. So, her mother was my father's sister. Making us cousins."
"What did you leave behind when you came to Konoha?" For a moment, Kagome imagined Ino as a reporter or a journalist with a microphone or notebook in hand. "A boyfriend, maybe?" There was a devilish smirk that brought a shiver down her back.
She paused, not certain if she should say anything at all. Would she stop if she answered, or if she answered would the inquisition continue? ". . .No boyfriend, or romantic interest."
From the corner of her eye, she saw Kurenai shake her head, and she felt her stomach sink. Oh no.
"No boyfriend, eh?" There was a collective shiver as an unholy gleam entered her eyes. Everyone at the table pitied Kagome. "What about a job? Did you have a job back-uh, where are you from?"
Kagome blinked and glanced at Kurenai with a raised eyebrow. Kurenai shrugged, "She didn't even know you were a girl when you were coming. Didn't have the chance to tell her much else."
"I lived just outside the border of Konoha, in the village closest to Kumo. There I worked for my lord. One of the ruling lords of that village."
"You were a servant?" Chouji asked, trying not to be a jerk. This person was a servant? She didn't look like a person who would be in that position. . .actually with that pretty face she looked like- hmm.
"Ah, no. Not exactly." How did she explain that she worked under him as a sort of quasi-advisor, but was more like his right-hand, but did everything he demanded?
"Concubine?" His chair squeaked and Kiba hissed as he felt two kicks deliver a swift painful blow to his shins. And did he imagine it or was the second kick chakra-enhanced?
"No!" And before they jump into any more crazy conclusions . . . "I was more his advisor than anything else. I was raised to be his sort of right hand woman. My lord," she felt weird saying that. My lord? Geeze, it sounds like he governs my whole body, "is blunt and doesn't have very much tact when it comes to politics, so I was taught doubly hard. So when we had visitors and doing negotiations people would believe I was just a decoration while secretly guiding my lord in his actions every step of the way. And also, nudging his decisions on a couple matters."
"So you were like a shadow-lord? That's kind of sneaky and very cool." Ino smiled, feeling more pride in her gender after hearing something like that.
"That makes it sound like he was incompetent, which he was anything but. But yeah, I could see how that would look."
"So you grew up breathing politics." Shino stated more than asked; he was intrigued. How much power did she really hold in that village, and also how good was she at what she did?
"I've always wondered if Kagome could beat Shikamaru in Shougi." Kurenai added in wondering aloud.
"You play?" Chouji and Ino asked in unison, "Shikamaru has been restless since he doesn't have any worthy opponents to play against. He'd love to hear about this for sure." Ino finished. "But we're done here so Chouji, you better walk me home."
"Well, I'm surprised," Kiba began with a grin as soon as Ino and Chouji were gone, "She didn't ask you for your birthday, what you like in a guy, or asked you to go shopping with her. Shocking, really."
"So what are you guys doing here?" Kurenai asked with a smile.
"Kiba got a whiff of your scent and wanted to see how you were doing." Shino said, tilting his shades a bit, "I too would like a match with you Higurashi-san."
"Oh sure, anytime before 12pm tomorrow would be good. After that, I have work until 9."
Kurenai sat back in her chair, stuffed beyond reason. "Until 9 in the evening? What about my dinner?" She pouted.
"You could make your own meal, fatty." Kagome poked her in the stomach; "Actually, you could make both our meals and come bring mine to me."
"After calling me fatty, I don't feel all that generous."
"Stingy!"
Kurenai laughed and then sighed, "I guess we should be getting home Kagome."
"W-We'll walk you h-home."
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The next day was something a little bit more hectic for Kagome, especially since the author of the Icha Icha series, Jiraiya-sama, was releasing his next volume. She'd never seen so many guys gathered in one bookstore for the release of a book. As it was she and her boss, Yamada Ebisu a jounin that owned his own bookstore, were swamped.
There was a long line that ran around the bookshelves and trailed off outdoors. There was a lot of noise and chatter and she was stuck at the cashiers' desk ringing book after book of Jiraiya-sama's work. She worried for a second that there wasn't going to be one left for her to have.
But one thing was for sure; everybody was soo nice to her!
She'd heard so many, "How are you doing today?" "Are you new here?" "I could show you around if you want." And she had already lost count as to how many people invited her out for lunch, or as the hours went on, to dinner.
And she'd even run into the silver-haired guy from the Laundromat, Hatake-san. She'd rung him up for some gardening books and one magazine of the Ninja's Journal.
"You like to garden?" She'd ask him.
"Mm. One of my students got me a plant for my birthday and I've been interested ever since." His eye had turned into a happy single arc.
"Oh! You're a jounin-sensei, too? That's nice. But why aren't you getting a copy of Icha Icha?"
He gave a mournful sigh, "I was out on a mission and I was too late to reserve my own copy."
"Oh, sorry to hear that." She gave him a sympathetic smile and saw him shrug. "The next shipment will be in two weeks, if you wanted to come by later."
"Thanks. How much will it be?" And that was it: her highlight of the day. How sad. Well, actually the highlight of her day had to be when she beat Shino in a Shougi match. A three-hour long battle, that was worth it if just to witness Shino's eyebrow twitch in annoyance the closer they got to the end of the match.
But, "Finally! I thought the day would never end." She reached into the air, arched her back, trying to pop it, and sighed when she heard the satisfying crack. "Ahh!"
"So, what did you think of you're first day?" Ebisu asked as he rounded the desk with a box in his hands and trailed to one of the many bookshelves to restock. He was a nice guy, an older man in his early 30's. With his Konoha headband wrapped around his forehead, covering his dark hair and tied in back. He was good-looking with a sharp nose, strong jaw, and lean figure.
"It was intense, but not overwhelming." She put a finger on her chin, "I actually liked it. It was different and nice." She beamed.
Ebisu adjusted his shades and took an envelop from the box and handed it to her. "You're first day's pay."
"I'm getting paid daily?"
He didn't even pause or flinch, "You never know when I'll be sent out on my last mission."
And she felt like a heel but she didn't want to make things worse by saying sorry because he clearly cared about his village and to say sorry. . ., "Oh. . .yeah, that's pretty smart. U-um, thanks." Kagome gave him a small smile.
"Let me put these books away and I'll walk you home."
"Oh, no it's alright." She walked back to the cashier's desk and reached below the counter to grab her bag and sweater.
"You sure?"
She waved away his concern, "It's alright. I only live a few blocks away. See you tomorrow, same time?"
"Yeah, goodnight."
"Goodnight!"
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The walk was relatively quiet, with a few shops still open on the street she was on, and god! Her feet were killing her. Immediately her eyes locked on to the stools of the Ichiraku Ramen stall. In a couple teeth clenching strides she was on a stool and taking off her heels. Never again, even if they did add 3 inches to her height, it just wasn't worth it.
She sighed as she flexed and wiggled her toes and looked up at the man standing behind the counter.
"What would you like, missy?" The old man said in a kind voice.
'He'd be a great grandfather with that voice,' she thought but aloud she said, "I'd like some pork ramen, please?"
"I'll get right on it." Instantly the cookers were turned on and she saw him smack down a large slab of dough on his workstation.
"It's a slow night, tonight ne, Teuchi-san?" A warm voice said from behind her. She turned as the flaps were moved aside and in stepped Umino Iruka. No wonder she had the inkling that she recognized that voice.
"Yeah, it is."
"Umino-san! Hi!"
"Higurashi-san! Hello." He sat on the stool to her right and ordered a pork ramen, the same as her. "How have you been?" He politely asked.
Kagome smiled, she liked staring at this guy's eyes. They were intelligent, caring and warm pools of chocolate brown. "I'm okay, could be doing better," she nodded to her feet and wiggled her toes as he looked down as well, "but definitely okay. You?"
A touch of concern crossed his eyes. 'They were such expressive eyes,' Kagome thought.
"Same." He chuckled, "Could be doing better, but same."
The steaming bowls of ramen were placed in front of the two, and they breathed in the near heavenly smell. Iruka gave a short laugh and Kagome looked over at him, "What's so funny?"
"Ah, no. I was just thinking that if Naruto were here he'd already be on his 4th bowl."
"Uzumaki Naruto?"
Startled brown eyes looked over, "You know him?"
"I know of him. That he's Haruno-san's teammate and that he wants to be Hokage, but that's it. Can you tell me more about him?"
"Sure." He said with a fond chuckle and the rest of the meal was filled with laughter as he talked about all the pranks that the blonde-haired blue-eyed boy pulled off.
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"I'm sorry for troubling you like this."
"No, I volunteered. Plus, you looked like you were in serious pain. It's alright, don't worry."
Kagome huffed, her breath tickling the back of Iruka's ear. He was carrying her piggyback style, supporting her by the back of her thighs. And they were six blocks away from her home.
"I thought," Iruka paused, hesitant, "woman were used to wearing heels?"
Kagome laughed, "I'm sure they are, but this is my first time ever wearing heels. I always wore more traditional shoes and well, my first day on the job I thought I'd be able to handle it, but . . .and it's not like we were born wearing them, we have to build up tolerance for the pain. Which, by the way, I'll never do. Ever."
Her arms were loosely wrapped around his neck and she was leaning her head on his right shoulder, making it a little uncomfortable for the chunnin because every time she sighed, breathed, or talked by his ear, the action tickled his ear. And his ears were one of the most sensitive parts of his body.
He shifted her higher on his back, "Ahh, as soon as I get home I'm going to finish grading a couple papers and then read a book. Preferably with tea."
Kagome hummed thinking about a nice salt-water bath for her feet, some hot chocolate, and finishing that Icha Icha book. "May I make a recommendation? You should read Icha Icha Paradise."
Iruka stumbled caught off guard and nearly dropped Kagome before he quickly gained his balance and gave a startled shout. "You READ that trash?!"
Kagome recoiled and her lips dropped into an indignant pout, "It's not trash." She mumbled. With more strength, "Have you read it?"
"NO! Why would I?!"
"Then how can you say its trash if you haven't read it, hmm??"
"By the people that DO read it!"
Kagome frowned, thinking about the people she knew that read it: her boss, herself, and Hatake-san. She didn't particularly think they were trash-reading people, but she smirked, flashing teeth and all because she knew he couldn't see it, "You think I'm trash?" She said in the saddest tone she could muster.
"N-no! T-That's not it all! I didn't mean YOU are trash, I just meant that people t-that. . .uh. Uhm!" He cringed, shutting up while he was behind.
"How about this. . .if you read it and don't like it, I'll cook your meals for a week! All at my expense, but you have to be truthful about it, yeah?"
Iruka perked up at the offer, interested. Free meals for a week? Free home-cooked meals for a week? He paused for a moment and thought, "How good of a cook are you?"
"I'm so good that you'll want to marry me." She gloated, taking Anko's words, "That's how good I am."
"Alright then." He shook the hand that was held over his shoulder and dangling in front of him, "It's a deal."
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OMAKE
A week later, Iruka found himself at the bookstore in the east-shopping district, with assorted books and magazines in hand. He headed off to pay for his purchases and turned to stone when he saw WHO was behind the cash register but swallowed his pride and put all his items on the counter.
He sweated when she got closer and closer to the one particular item and cringed when she held up volume 2 of the Icha Icha series. A wide smile spread across her cheeks and a twinkle appeared in her sky blues.
"So. . ."
"S-So. . ."
"Enjoy it, did you?"
He yanked the bag with his purchases out of her hands and quickly strode out, his pride leaving a trail of scattered dust behind him.
A/C: Chapter 1: Complete!
You guys are so amazing, thank you for all the encouraging reviews. I only wish I wasn't so lazy so I could respond to them, but at least I'm spending my time writing more, neh?
All your reviews are read, printed, laminated and tacked on my wall. Your reviews are that precious to me! And I'm that much of a dork. Okay, no not really. They're printed though and I tote them around for whenever I feel like writing but need inspiration. You'd be surprised how many times I've brought it out during class. . .haha!
Oh! I actually have quite a few stories in my saved files. Two of them, which I can combine. Umm, it's another KakashiKagome story, but probably a little different from what you're used to reading. I'm thinking of posting an excerpt from it on my profile, but I'm not sure . . .should I just wait until I finish this story to post the first chapter instead??
I think I'll probably do that, but I'll have it on my profile; the title and summary of the story.
